


If only in my dreams

by FireSoul



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23280478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: Lisa spends half her life chasing her soulmate, half her life running away from him, and when it all comes to a head there is no telling which half will make up the rest.
Relationships: Ray Palmer/Lisa Snart
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20





	1. The Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Speacial thanks to oojel for asking me to write Ray in a soulmate AU!

All her life, Lisa has a place in her heart for her soulmate.

Soulmates see each other in dreams, but only if the two of them are asleep and dreaming at the same time. There is no speaking, no touching, but they’re there.

Some people don’t remember the first dream they have with their soulmate, but Lisa does. She’s only about three years old, and in her dream she’s sitting on a train having a tea party with some stuffed animals and a boy. He has dark brown hair and even darker brown eyes, and it isn’t until she wakes up that she questions why he had been there sipping tea and eating cookies with her, yet he never spoke.

She’s five when her Kindergarten teacher reads the class a storybook about two soulmates and she commits herself to the idea that the boy she sees in some of her dreams is her soulmate.

“Lenny!” She shouts at the end of school, when she is running through the courtyard to her brother. “Lenny!”

She huffs, she needs to catch her breath. “I know who my soulmate is!”

Lenny gives her a funny look, the kind of look he likes to give her when he hasn’t decided yet if he believes her or not.

“Oh yeah?” He asks, grabbing the little hook strap of her backpack.

“Yeah!” She says, and she slides her arms out of the straps and while they start walking Lenny puts one strap over his shoulder. “I see him in my dreams sometimes, and Mr. Bates says that if you see someone in your dreams a lot but they never talk to you, they’re probably your soulmate.”

“I see.” Lenny says, and that is ALL he says.

“Do you know who your soulmate is?”  
Lenny frowns, and he’s quiet for a while, and she doesn’t really like when he’s quiet so long because that usually means he’s thinking.

“Lenny?”

“I’m thinking.” He says, “Trying to remember, I don’t think about it much.”

She nods, and stays quiet.

“No.” He finally says, “I don’t think I do.”

“But if you see ‘em in your dreams and they don’t talk to you, that’s supposed to mean it’s them.”

Lenny shrugs, “Maybe I’ll start paying attention.”

* * *

It is important to note that as a Kindergartener Lisa is about as good as reading boundaries as anyone else her age.

It happens one night after she’s refused to eat her dinner. Dad tries to hit her, Lenny grabs his arm, Dad ends up throwing Lenny against a wall and punching him before he grabs her plate and throws that too.

“You stupid bitch.” He grumbles in her direction before he leaves and goes upstairs to bed.

She’s sobbing, and through her tears she watches as Lenny gets up and goes over to the fridge. She’s trying to say his name but all that comes out is tears and hiccups so she starts scrambling off her chair, running over to him.

“Lisa, just sit down.” Lenny hisses, picking her up and putting her back.

“But-”

“Sit down!” He repeats, “I’ll make you peanut butter and jelly.”

She stays in her seat, still sniffling and crying even after Lenny has put her sandwich in front of her. Once she has finally calmed down and eaten he brings her upstairs to get ready for bed. She puts on her Care Bears nightgown and brushes her teeth, and then at Lenny’s insistence she gets into bed even if she really wants to stay up.

“Did you find your soulmate yet?” She asks while he tucks her in.

“No Lis.” He sighs, and she frowns.

“Did you look?”

He sighs again. “No Lisa, I didn’t.”

She frowns even more; he said he was going to pay more attention in his dreams.

“Don’t you ever see anyone-?”

“No Lisa, I don’t.” He snaps, and she shrinks back in her pillow.

“But-”

“Enough.” He growls, “I’m not a soulmate person.”

Now that just doesn’t make sense. How can someone not be a soulmate person? She sits up, messing up his perfectly good job of tucking her in.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He says, nudging her back down. “Some people believe in soulmates. I am not one of those people.”

“What?!”

“Lisa!” He hisses at her, “Enough. Go to sleep.”

“But-”

“Goodnight Lisa.”

With that he leaves and shuts out her lights, leaving her lying there to turn onto her side and grumble to herself that someday he’ll see. Someday his soulmate will come along and he’ll have to believe.

* * *

She never stops believing per-say, but the older she gets the easier it is for her to understand why Lenny did. She can’t imagine her father ever had a soulmate, Mick tells her at some point that he’s never once seen some person in his dreams whom he couldn’t interact with, and Lenny always remains adamant that he’s never had that either.

But she continues to see the boy.

Not every night, but most throughout her childhood. His hair starts to darken as they get older, and around the time she’s eleven and starting to notice boys she can’t help but to compare the boys at school to the one in her dreams.

Not to mention she can’t help but to look for him everywhere.

She knows, logically, that the world is much larger than her little corner of Central City. Yet she can’t help but to look. She fantasizes about him being the new kid at school, or meeting him through the fence in the yard that separates the boys from the girls in Juvie. She wonders if she’ll meet him at a party. But she never does, and by the time her twenties hit she’s left most of these fantasies behind.

Curiously, that turns out to be when she finally sees him.

She doesn’t see him in person, but it isn’t a dream either. She’s reading the paper looking for a new target that will reward her with enough money to post bail for Lenny and Mick with a little bit left over for herself, when she sees the grainy black and white image of a smiling face she knows all too well.

_Hudson University student Ray Palmer scores Mercury Labs internship in Nanotech development._

Ray Palmer.

A name to the face, and he’s in Central.

Without giving the idea a second thought she drops the paper and heads into her room to get dressed. She takes her time going through all of her shirts and trying to match one to her best pair of jeans. It isn’t every day you get to meet your soulmate, much less have advanced warning on it. She tries to keep in mind that if he’s in the paper for getting such a big scholarship, maybe she should leave some of her more risqué clothes for the second impression. She decides on a halter-top that shows off her belly-button ring. She then does her make-up with maybe a little more effort than usual and grabs her jacket, her helmet, and her keys; then off she goes.

As she weaves her way through the city on her motorcycle she wonders how she should approach this. Will he recognize her from any dreams? Will he even think of that? Or should she just find him and play like she’s visiting a friend and wandering around campus bored? That could work; it certainly has in the past when she’s looking for a little fun. But this isn’t about fun; this is supposed to be so much more.

When she arrives at the university she takes a wild guess and pulls into the parking lot of the science center. The building is open most days, so she has no problem getting in. Soon as she is in she hunts down the nearest bathroom and fixes her hair, she doesn’t want helmet hair when she meets her soulmate. After that she wanders around the first floor and then the second, and she is starting to plan out what building she could check next when, as luck would have it, she sees him through an open doorway.

She jumps back, lingering at the side of the door, peeking in. He’s talking to a professor, shaking the older man’s hand and smiling bright. Neither he nor the professor has noticed her yet, and thank goodness for that.

Seeing him here, not more than a few mere feet in front of her, she notices for the first time how bright his smile is. She sees how lightly he carries himself. She can hear the excitement in his voice as he confidently promises his teacher that he won’t let him down. Confidence and excitement, those are qualities that rarely go hand in hand in her own life.

_Hudson University student Ray Palmer scores Mercury Labs internship in Nanotech development._

The article title flashes through her mind and she ducks back completely out of the doorway, standing against the wall and really thinking this through.

He has just gotten a huge internship; one that could lead to a great future. The way he is talking to his professor in there, the way he is _excited_ for an internship like that rather than nervous, Ray is something special and he knows it.

She hesitates a moment, but when she hears his voice getting closer to the doorway she makes up her mind and walks back the way she came, disappearing back around the corner before he can see any more than the briefest glimpse of the back of her head, if that. Ray has a promising future ahead of him; he doesn’t need her dragging him down.

After that she tries not to think about him anymore. She stays up late going to parties, running jobs, and when she’s in jail she gets high on whatever drug it is her cellmate and neighbors happen to be smoking that day. She makes her sleep schedule short and erratic, avoiding dreams so that she never has to see him.

If Lenny knows something is going on he keeps it to himself. That alone makes her think he does know something’s bothering her. He’s been critical of her carefree personality since long before it got out of hand. When she was nine and sneaking downstairs to watch a movie after he’d put her to bed he had dragged her back to bed each time until he finally started unplugging the TV at night. When she was thirteen and he caught her stealing a six-pack of dad’s beer he’d ripped the case from her hand, chucked it out the kitchen window, and lectured her about if she wasn’t careful she would end up exactly like their father or worse. He’s voiced numerous times his disapproval of her using her body to get close to a mark, even if she is a grown-up now who can make her own decisions.

So him keeping his mouth shut when it’s obvious she’s either drunk off her ass or high as a kite? He has to know something. Maybe she told him one night while drunk, that’s a possibility.

In any case he lets her get away with it for exactly two months after she gets out of her month sentence in jail, and then one night while she’s sitting on the couch of his little apartment with her feet propped on the coffee table and _Pretty Woman_ playing on the TV he comes and sits down next to her, his eyes glaring daggers into hers.

“Clean up.” He orders simply, “Or you’re out.”

She is fairly certain “out” doesn’t mean he’ll force her to go back home and live with dad. Even after her worst days he wouldn’t do that. It might mean out of his crew, out of his protection from other criminals. She doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t wait for her to. He leaves her be, and after rolling her eyes she goes back to her movie.

She tells herself that she cleans up because she knows this is an even worse use of her existence than crime. She doesn’t quit anything, to be clear, she still gets drunk and gets high, but slowly she starts to dial down the frequency and severity. She also lets herself start sleeping again, and if she sees Ray’s face she simply tries her best to ignore it and get through the dream.

“Hey,”

Well crap.

It’s been said that once soulmates meet – no matter how briefly – they gain the ability to communicate through their dreams. She must not have moved fast enough. He must have seen the back of her head as she was leaving, or caught a glimpse of her when she first poked her head into the doorway.

She hopes he doesn’t notice the way her whole body stiffens, and then she tries to go about her business; which in this dream happens to be aimlessly wandering around an abandoned fairground.

“Hey!”

She quickens her pace. He doesn’t have to know she can hear him. If she shows no reaction hopefully she can make him think she hasn’t seen him; that she can’t communicate with him.

“Wait!”

No, she has to get out of here, but her sleeping mind won’t think to wake up. So she decides it’s logical to leave, she can do that. Right? She’s controlled her dreams before, surely the laws of soulmates will allow for her to get away from him if she doesn’t want him here. It must work that way, otherwise she is sure divorce rates would have sparked much sooner than the 1950’s.

She imagines another place, any other place. The fairground fades away around her and becomes replaced by a forest. Not ideal, but he isn’t here and that’s what counts.

She goes on like that for a long time. She doesn’t always see him in her dreams, but whenever she does she teleports herself away. He never follows her. She wonders if he can, and if he can if he knows how, or if maybe he’s given up on contacting her. That last theory always leaves a pain in her heart, which is incredibly stupid because that’s what she wants. She wants him to live his life to all of his potential, free of worry over her and whether or not she is in prison on any given day.

That pain, she supposes, is why she starts checking up on him.

Not in person of course, that would undo all her hard work at keeping her distance. But if she sees Mercury Labs in the paper she takes the time to skim the article for his name, and then later on she checks out a science-y newsletter or two whenever she has the chance. Within a decade it seems like his name is everywhere. He’s started his own company, he’s on the cutting edge of technology, and she can’t help but smirk with pride every time she sees his face pop up attached to some new breakthrough in a world of technology she doubts even Lenny understands fully. Every time she sees him in the news she knows she made the right call back in that science building. The world is a much better place when she hasn’t dragged him down.

Even so, she isn’t sure which headline crushes her more: the one announcing his engagement to some Ivy League socialite, or the one proclaiming her death.

Tears well up in her eyes as she reads the unwavering black and white title. _Anna Loring, Starling City surgeon and fiancée of tech genius Ray Palmer, among those dead in Deathstroke assault._

She doesn’t have much time to process it in the moment; she is about to leave on a job. But when the job is said and done and she’s crawling into her bed she can’t push the thoughts away. She can’t imagine how he must be feeling. She’s never loved anyone the way he must have loved Anna, enough to want to spend the rest of their lives together. There’s a selfish part of her mind that wonders if he ever thought of her while making that decision. Surely he knows Anna is not his soulmate, right? Maybe he assumed her disappearing in the dreams meant she was dead, and he should move on.

That thought has her stomach twisting. She can’t tell where the anger ends and the guilt begins. Is this on her? Some people believe the universe has ways of “correcting” those who choose a life with someone other than their soulmate. Is this the universe punishing him – punishing Anna – for her choice? After all, if she stuck around that day in the science building he may very well have never met Anna, and thus she might not be dead.

But, he would’ve never done even a quarter of the good he has.

She sobs out what’s left of her tears, telling herself that she won’t cry any more after tonight. She tells herself all the people he’s helped and the good he’s done makes this worth it. She’s killed intentionally with far less for the world to gain. She can live with Anna’s blood on her hands.

She’s going to have to.

So she does, day in and day out for nearly a year, until she reads a headline far worse than the one that had announced Anna’s death.

_Ray Palmer killed in lab explosion._

She stares blankly at the computer screen until it dims, and then immediately she shakes the mouse to brighten it back up, but the words haven’t changed.

Ray Palmer is still dead.

She isn’t sure what to do with herself in light of this. She’s alone, and a part of her has the sense to think that maybe she shouldn’t be alone right now, but what should she do? She can’t very well explain to someone that her soulmate died today without revealing she knows who he is.

It’s the middle of the day, so she tries to go about the day as normal and shove it from her mind. She does her laundry, she watches TV, and she thinks about going over the plans for the job next week but ultimately decides she doesn’t feel like it. When night finally falls she counts down the seconds until it is an appropriate time to go to bed, and then she curls in on herself under her blankets and cries until she’s asleep.

In her dream she finds herself standing in nothingness. The air around her feels heavy and has a rosy tint; like it needs her to know it is so heavy she can see it.

“Hey.”

She jumps, squeals as she turns around, and he’s _there._

He shouldn’t be. Not even soulmates can see one another in dreams after one has died. But he’s standing right in front of her, looking so scared and desperate and she remembers somewhere in her mind that she doesn’t want him knowing she can see and hear him, but she doesn’t move.

She stands paralyzed, even as he takes a step closer, watching her carefully.

“I don’t know if you can hear me.” He says, his voice only a step away from trembling. “But if you can, I’m alive.”

Her heart skips a beat.

Alive. He’s alive. Somehow, he’s alive.

“I don’t know where you are, but please, I need you to get a message to Felicity Smoak in Starling City, if you can. Tell her I’m alive and I’m in trouble. Damian Darhk has me held captive on his desk but I don’t know where that is.”

She does her very best not to show any reaction, but given that this is a dream and she is in such a state of shock, she isn’t sure how well that actually works. All she knows is he is looking at her like she is his only hope in the world, and then the dream is gone.


	2. Somewhere Only We Know

First thing the next morning Lisa does exactly as Ray has asked. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more. She tracks down this Felicity Smoak at Ray’s company and after a little digging she finds her personal line, and then calls from a freshly acquired burner phone.

She relays Ray’s message word for word, and then hangs up before Felicity can ask even one question. She gets rid of the phone, avoids sleep for a day or two, and then spends the next few months keeping an eye out for word of Ray’s return to the world.

Only there never is any.

For all the news articles, magazine covers, and scientific breakthroughs, she never sees even one measly stub of a footnote announcing his return to the world. No interviews, nothing. She’s starting to worry.

Maybe that’s why she starts going to bed at a decent hour again.

It takes a few days, but eventually she finds herself in a dream of sitting on a city bus, and lo-and-behold he appears next to her.

“Hi.” He says, his smile is bright and she almost forgets that the time for humoring him is over. She got the message out, and now she knows he’s alive, so she needs to go back to ignoring him.

But the way his usual smile is falling from his face… She doesn’t have it in her to will herself away.

“Um… Again, I don’t know if you can hear me. If you can, I need you to tell Felicity Smoak in Starling City I’m in trouble, and being held captive by Damian Darhk.”

Her heart sinks.

Felicity hasn’t found him yet.

Wherever he is he must be getting scared, wondering if anyone will come for him, and suddenly the temptation to open her mouth and let him know she can talk to him is greater than ever. She wants nothing more than to ease his worries and let him know that Felicity got his message.

She almost does, but thankfully he opens his mouth again and it stops her.

“Anyway, if you can hear me… Do you mind hanging around? I’m kind of on my own out there in the real world. It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

She looks blankly at him, processing that, and he chuckles.

“I’ll take your lack of running away as a yes.”

He starts then by saying he can’t tell her why someone would fake his death and then kidnap him because it would put her in danger, and isn’t that ironic? She wants to tell him he couldn’t possibly ever put her in any danger she can’t handle. He talks about being sorry if she saw his face with the headlines reporting on his death, and then he tells her everything else.

He grew up in Ivy Town, his parents divorced when he was little and his dad took his twin brother while his mom took him. She wants to ask what kind of sick parent-trap style custody arrangement that is. He tells her he graduated top of his class in high school, top five in college, and she’s grateful she resisted opening her mouth earlier because then he might have asked about her and she would’ve had to tell him she never went to college, and did most of her high-school work in a cell.

She wakes up sometime near the end of that conversation, unexpectedly, and even so it is the first time in a very long time she’s woken up from seeing Ray without feeling as though she’s made a huge mistake.

As the morning goes on, however, that feeling settles in.

What was she thinking? Letting him spill his entire life story to her, and not to mention blowing the secret that she can hear him? It is without a doubt the stupidest mistake she could’ve made.

But she makes it again, and again, and again.

He tells her when he’s been rescued, and thanks her over and over for getting the message to Felicity. He tells her he’d thought she was hearing him, but he couldn’t be sure. He theorizes that at some point he must have seen her somewhere, but she never saw him, and so that must be why she can’t talk.

She doesn’t have it in her to tell him she did see him.

Something else she doesn’t have in her is the will to stop meeting him in dreams, to stop listening to him, even now that he’s safe. Whenever she crosses his path during sleep she doesn’t run away like she used to, she tells herself there’s no point now. He tells her he’s working on some projects, and that he isn’t looking to go back to his company now that he’s safe.

One night while they’re in a dream of walking along train tracks that seem to never end, he tells her he’s glad he’s caught her.

“I’m going on a trip.” He says, “It’s kind of a business trip, but it’s part of that stuff that got me kidnapped, sort of. I can’t put you in danger by telling you about it. Besides, you wouldn’t believe it anyway. Even I can hardly believe it.”

She stops walking, her arms are already folded across her middle and she purses her lips questioningly. She knows that type of bullshit excuse, and that terrifies her. What the hell could he be mixed up in that he’s giving her the same type of crap she would give if she were going on the run?

“Don’t worry, I haven’t been kidnapped again.” He promises her with a chuckle. “I guess… I can tell you this project is for the betterment of the world. I’m going to make the future a better place.”

She nods, she still doesn’t like how vague he’s being, but leaving on a secret trip to make the world a better place sounds like something he would do.

“Anyway,” He continues as they start to walk again. “I don’t know what sleeping is going to be like on this trip, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again.”

She nods, and she can feel his eyes burning into her, so she keeps hers trained firmly on her shoes.

“Who knows?” He chuckles, “Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll find out who you are along the way.”

* * *

Her eyes snap open.

She is staring up at her ceiling, her blankets half thrown off and her mind reeling.

She knows, logically, that unless Ray is planning to look at Central City’s most wanted files wherever he goes then he won’t find her. She knows that he is likely going to be doing a lot of traveling, going a lot of places he’s never been, and she’s sure that’s enough reason for him to believe he might find her. But he won’t. So long as he doesn’t go through a list of known criminals in Central City, he won’t.

She reaches onto her nightstand and grabs her phone to check the time, and she finds a text from Lenny instead.

_Mick and I are heading on a job tomorrow afternoon, might be gone awhile._

She almost texts back, maybe they’ll need a third. But ultimately she decides not to. It’ll be for the best if she stays local right now. She can keep an eye out for the slim possibility of Ray coming through, avoid the even slimmer possibility of crossing paths with Ray’s travels while traveling with Lenny and Mick, and more importantly she can go about her life. It’ll be good not seeing Ray. She needs to get her head back into place, to remember there is a reason she’s spent so much time avoiding him.

It’s only natural that in order to achieve this reminder, she goes out and pulls a sloppy job and lands herself in prison.

Sitting in her cell in the mornings, the common area in the afternoons, and her cell again at night all while knowing the only family she has is out there running the risk of landing in the same predicament is enough of a reminder. This is not the kind of soulmate Ray needs. This is not the kind of life he’s used to, nor is it the kind of life anyone should be used to. It’s too late for her, but not for him.

Naturally, a wrench is soon thrown into her dull jail routine.

A pissed off mercenary in black leather violently breaking her way into Iron Heights is hardly out of the ordinary, it’s basically just another Thursday. Said pissed off mercenary coming into her cell was a little unexpected on Lisa’s part, but she figures Shawna must have made a new friend.

The pissed off mercenary knocking her out before she could make even the tiniest of moves isn’t even concerning.

But waking up handcuffed on the floor of what she’s assuming is a warehouse along with a random assortment of people who are clearly not criminals? That has her worried.

She sits herself up and looks around. The others around her are doing the same, or trying to. The first person she sees clearly is a man, not much older than herself and dressed in a soldiers uniform. She also sees a woman, much older than she is and struggling to get herself up.

Then she sees a ghost.

She hears a groan first and looks to the ground next to her. There is a woman there, one whom Lisa doesn’t recognize at first, but then the woman rolls onto her back and Lisa gets a good look at her face.

Anna.

“Where… What’s going on?”

Lisa gapes at her, her mouth unable to form any word. Anna, on the other hand, isn’t so stoic and quickly begins to panic.

“What’s going on?” She asks again, whirling her head all around, her shoulders too.

“I don’t… I don’t know.” Lisa hurries to say, trying to be heard over Anna’s panicking. “I don’t know.”

That’s when a door opens, and Lisa just barely has enough time to make out the figure of the psycho in leather from the prison before a blinding light fills the room, and that’s it.

* * *

She didn’t think it was possible, but things actually get weirder when she wakes up.

She’s on a bed this time. The mattress is stiff under her but nowhere near as bad as a prison mattress. The ceiling is unfamiliar, and when she starts to get up she sees, of all people, Lenny sitting in a nearby chair shuffling a deck of cards.

“Lenny?” She asks, looking around. “What is this place?”

Her brother sighs, and before answering he first reaches over to a nearby desk and grabs the sleeve for the cards.

A desk with his gun sitting on it.

“It’s a long story.” He says, and then he tells it.

Time travel.

Him and Mick, recruited to save the world.

She’d laugh if she hadn’t just been kidnapped as a means of extorting him – or at the very least his Captain - into sacrificing his life.

“So,” she says instead, “You’ve gone good?”

He snorts, “hardly.” He stops then, like he’s thinking about something.

That’s when someone knocks at his door.

They both look up, and something sinks in her chest. One of those gut feelings. She knows even before Lenny gets up with the most put-upon sigh and presses his hand to the scanner who is going to be there, if her waking up next to Anna is to serve as any indicator.

Her stomach still flips when she sees Ray standing there.

He looks right past Lenny, she does too, and her poor brother is left to look between them and Lisa can tell by the lack of threats that he already knows what is going on here.

“I’ll give you two a moment.” He says, and then he excuses himself without so much as a sarcastic remark.

So much for not believing in soulmates.

Ray steps into the room, the door closing behind him, and he gives her an awkward little wave.

“Hey,” he says, “So, I’m Ray, as you know. Your uh… Your name came up when we found out who The Pilgrim had kidnapped. Lisa. Ah…”

She has exactly three ideas. Each of them involves running, one of them to him.

That is not the one she chooses.

“Ray.” She says, getting to her feet, and his smile lights up his face instantly.

“Wow.” He says, “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to hear your voice.”

He chuckles to himself, clearly oblivious to the tears in her eye and the soft frown on her face.

“I mean I’m sure you have some idea. I wonder when we crossed paths? And who knew only one of us would be able to talk?”

“Ray.”

“Yeah?”

She presses her tongue between her teeth, mentally steeling herself.

He’s always so happy. In their shared dreams and, evidentially, in real life.

She doesn’t want to see what he looks like with a shattered heart.

“You weren’t the only one able to talk.”

He tilts his head, which makes him look very much like a confused puppy.

“What?”

She sighs, inhales deep and wills down the apologies screaming in her throat.

“I saw you, sixteen years ago. At Hudson.”

He blinks, the smile coming back to his face but in a different way. It’s a smile that comes with confusion, with wanting to deny.

“You went to Hudson?” He asks, and she shakes her head. “Ok… But you were there?”

She nods, and his face falls as the weight of what she is telling him - as what is only the start of the awful things she’s done to him - settles in.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

She sighs, and she wants nothing more than to sink back onto Lenny’s bunk and burry her face in her knees. She wants to crawl under his blankets and shut everything out, especially this.

But she won’t do that.

Instead she holds her ground, and with her arms being crossed she squeezes her own elbow as a means of kicking herself into gear.

“I saw your picture in the paper after you got an internship at Mercury Labs. I wasn’t in prison at the moment so I went down to Hudson to see you, and when I did I saw how happy you were, and how much you had ahead of you.”

Something flits over his face then, many somethings, actually. Anger, disbelief, confusion, the list could go on.

“So you just left?” He asks, “And all this time… You’re saying that all this time we could have been together?”

“It wouldn’t have worked.”

“Wouldn’t have worked?” He nearly snaps, “We’re soulmates. It is literally the one thing in the universe that is guaranteed to work.”

“Oh please, there are plenty of soulmates who break up-”

“And get back together!” He argues, “Do you know how few people actually find their soulmate so early? How much time we could have had together? How many soulmates-”

“Shut up with all that soulmate shit!”

She shouts, and she doesn’t _mean_ to shout, but she shouts and the look of hurt on his face is _exactly_ why she’s kept her distance. She’s no good for him.

She exhales heavily, a threat of tears in her eyes.

“You see why I never said anything?” She asks, “Because I am a perpetual mess and you deserve better than that.”

“Lisa.”

“Save it. “ She says, “You found happiness without me once. You’re on a time machine. Go drop Anna off somewhere she’ll safe when all this is over.”

Whatever he has to say to that, she can’t stand to stick around for it. So she doesn’t.

* * *

The Waverider makes the stops to drop off The Pilgrim’s hostages one by one. First to Central City 1993, and to then Starling City 2014, where Ray returns Anna to her proper place.

Lisa knows she should be in Lenny’s room, but that would mean dealing with Lenny. Still, facing Lenny right now sounds preferable when compared to facing Ray. Yet she isn’t in Lenny’s room, she’s in the ship’s loading bay.

It isn’t long before the ramp lowers and Ray comes trudging up, and her heart skips a beat. His eyes are red, not to mention firmly locked onto hers from the moment he notices her. She should go. She should let him be alone.

She slides off the crate she’s been perched on and very cautiously takes a step towards him.

“How are you doing?”

He wipes at his eyes, “I’m alright.” He shrugs, “I did ask Rip to check the timeline, but even if I wasn’t with her, there was no saving Anna.”

She nods, and something inside of her is the tiniest bit relieved at that; one less body on her conscious.

“Lisa, about earlier, I’m sorry.”

She scrunches her brows together, and so he keeps talking.

“Even if I don’t agree with what you did, I get why you did it. We were young and maybe it was too soon. Then after that, I guess there never was a good time to tell me what happened.”

He licks his lips, a determination setting in his eyes.

“But with how this mission is going… I don’t know how much time we might have left. And you are not a perpetual mess, not any more than anyone else on this ship, at least. Look I know this is a lot to ask but if you’re anything like your brother then I know you can take care of yourself so… Why don’t you stay?”

She… It is very rare that Lisa Snart finds herself speechless, but she’s speechless. After all she’s put him through, he wants her to stay? Is he insane?

Or, she supposes the better question would be, is she? Because when they touch down an hour later in 2016 Central City, she doesn’t get off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da!


End file.
